What Do You Know When You Know Nothing? You Know the Reality of What You Are - 22nd May 2023
Saar (Essence)
Ananta teaches that human suffering stems solely from believing the next thought, which creates a false sense of limitation. He guides seekers to dissolve this egoic identity by remaining open, empty, and anchored in unconditional love for God.
The only problem in the human condition is the belief in what a thought is offering you.
To be empty is to be conceptually empty; to know even one thing is to know too much.
Spirituality is that which clears the room for God to arrive by deconstructing the 'me'.
intimate
Transcript
This transcript is auto-generated and may contain errors.
I'm believing in my thoughts, yeah. Just so much negativity and energy is coming to this body. Even if I try to watch, to observe, it's so strong that I get caught. There's no space, so it's very difficult to manage.
Unless you zero in on who the culprit actually is. Because the culprit sometimes seems like there's too much negative energy, there's a complete lack of space, people around me, or my emotions, thoughts. So the culprit is only one—you know what I'm gonna say—so the culprit is always only the next thought, you see? Because for you to run out of space, or for you to have too much of anything negative or positive, you have to be limited first. The unlimited one cannot be constricted in terms of how much they can take of anything because they are unlimited. Yes or no? Can the unlimited take an infinite amount of everything and not be affected by it? Are you with me? You can start against me. The unlimited one, can it not take an infinite amount of anything and not be affected by it? It can. So first you have to become limited, or take yourself to be limited, for anything to become too much. Too much negativity, too much lack of space, you see?
Now, what is the way in which you can take yourself to be limited? Or is that organically our situation, that we are limited and we have to believe in the thoughts? Okay, so only through belief. And can you believe two thoughts at a time? So it is merely this thought, one thought, you see? Without which there's no problems; with which you take yourself to be completely different from what you really are. So get this point: that nobody will ever believe a thought and be free from the hypnosis of the thought, which is the limitation. Nobody will ever do that. To believe in the thought is to buy into the hypnosis and the narrative of it, which is to take yourself to be an object, you see? To take yourself to be limited. On the flip side, it is impossible for you to do that without a thought. As much as your thought will resist that, your thought itself will say, 'No, not always me, it's sometimes the body, sometimes something else.' No, always only the thought. Okay?
So if this point is clear, then it's very simple because you've identified the source of the trouble. And once you identify the source of the trouble, then to fix it is quite straightforward, if that's what we really want to do. So it's like the car is there, it's not running, so fix it. How will you fix it? So on becoming a discourse, so a car is not running, you have to fix it. What you have to do is fix the whole car? Yeah, check what the problem is. You know, suppose you have to diagnose what the problem is. So we have already diagnosed the problem in the human condition. And I am telling you the problem, the only seeming problem in the human condition, is the belief in what a thought is offering you, which is a version of reality which is just not true. Because in that version of reality, you are a limited entity which is a bundle of food mostly, you see? A flesh bucket. So, but without that, you cannot be that. You cannot take yourself to be that. You know, take yourself to be your body without a thought. Try to do it. Just organically be the body. Okay, you may notice that the sensations are still there, but you also notice that the sensations are happening within you, just like every perception is happening within you. But once you buy into the narrative of the thought, you are this bundle of sensations. You take yourself to be this bundle of sensations. And once you give yourself a shape in that way, then the shape can be shaken. Okay? Then it is just asking for trouble. Then onslaught after onslaught—the emotion, thought, people, energy, magic, all kinds of weird things can happen to you. Without that, nothing.
So get it clear that till this top story is not empty, okay, you will not get it. It's the opposite of school. In school they tell you, 'Better get it here, otherwise you'll never get it.' Here, this has to be empty. Without that, all this is just wrong. Let's use this. There's no point hearing a news which is what we got here without the mind being empty, head being empty. Go back down. So open and empty is a simple way of putting that. Let's be open, because sometimes when you hear just 'empty,' what may happen is that you may feel like, 'No, no, I want to defend the emptiness from anything that comes. You don't know, you can't come, I want to be empty.' Okay, so what happens when you say open and empty? That anything can come, everything can come, but nothing can stay.
Read more (43 more paragraphs) ↓Show less ↑
What is empty? What happens when you are empty? Let's break it down today. When you're empty, you don't know. When you're empty, you don't know anything except that which is true. So many years that we had this small whiteboard here, that was the remnant of an office we used to have in this part of the house. So on that whiteboard I got someone to write—maybe Chennai wrote down—saying what was my favorite thing to say those days. You may remember also: 'To have to know even one thing was to know too much.' Then what do you know when you know nothing? It actually just sounds like a bundle of words. If to know even one thing is to know too much, what is it that you know when you know nothing? So I just said that don't do anything, and that is the only way to know the truth. The instant you start to know, that is the start of all the trouble.
So to be empty is to not know anything. So it means to be conceptually empty. Conceptually empty, that's all. You don't have a conceptual version of anything. That is what are we full of? We are full of conceptual knowledge about things that we think they are a certain way, that we think that they are. To be empty of that is to come to the truth. So what is it that you know? Can I ask this question now? After many years, it didn't really hit home five, six years ago that we moved along since then to be able to really look at this question. That I am, know that you are, that you are. And the 'you' that is, or the 'I' that am, is that known or not known? Isn't that what we wanted to realize, the Self? But it's not known in the way we thought it would be. It's not known as a concept or an experience. So are we just making it up then? Because beside concept and experience, is there anything?
And this question you can't really speculate about. You have to meet for yourself and confirm or to say, 'No, no, nothing happened. I am empty but I don't know the Self. What are you talking about?' Is that possible for you to be empty and to not know? Strange, isn't it? Because we wanted to know, so that we came to know. Now to know, you have to let go of knowing. So empty of knowing, you know the truth. What do you know when you know nothing? You know the reality of what you are. Atma Gyan is apparent to you.
So this is to remain in the unborn, to remain free of avidya, to remain as the original Adam without eating up. Whichever culture, whichever tradition, whichever religion you want to look at, the main thing is the same. This is the only way to follow God's will. Everyone tells you you must follow God's will. How to do it? By not having a will of your own, by not having a separate identity. So Atma Gyan is apparent to us and that is the only way in which we follow God's will. The unlimited nature of your being is apparent. The primordial pulsation of your presence is apparent. And true unconditional love, peace, and joy can be tasted only here. That is the meaning of Sat-Chit-Ananda. All it's possible only when you're empty. But to be truly empty, you cannot be imposing empty. Imposing empty means empty and waiting. 'Okay, I thought I'm empty, but where is God?' Okay? Can't be empty and waiting, empty and expecting. Just empty, don't know anything. It can seem like a risk. That's why you need a Guru to come and tell you, because you need someone that you can really trust. Don't know anything and as apparent.
So you can look at this game this way, or you can look at this game outwards in. So you can start with humility, love, presence, being, Self. Or you can look at Self, being in presence, love, humility. Relax. This way and this way, although these are just provisional ways of saying this way and that way, but for a while it can seem true. So if there's a struggle at any point of it, if you're feeling stuck at any point, all these pointers are available. Not feeling any love in your heart? What is the pointer? Yeah, correct. Suppose you're coming outward in, you see? Then it is impossible to feel love, to feel unconditional love, if there is pride. So become humble. We are not special. Nobody is. You were reading something very beautiful the other day where in the magnificence of God, given how awesome God is, what is so special about us? What can we—suppose we became the best—we should still not be anywhere close to the magnificence of God. So there's no reason for pride. Okay? Have you ever met anyone who was like proud and feeling unconditional love? It's impossible. It's impossible to be in that outwardly, but inwardly and to feel unconditional love.
This unconditional love can be the doorway into presence, into the presence of being. When we check where this love is arising from, it brings us to this Guru presence, the Holy Spirit, the Atma. And when you check the nature of this presence, you will conclude intuitively that it is boundless. But this boundlessness cannot be fathomed with any perception. Its true nature cannot be fathomed with any concept. And yet this intuitively you know. This intuitively you know: that you are beyond birth and death, all states, beyond the universe and beyond time and space. As you recognize this, you also intuitively know that you are aware of even all of this. The unlimited nature of being, you are aware of it. That 'you' is your absolute reality. This no concept can really explain, or we can't really talk about it in any way. This is the reality with capital R.
Okay, so we deconstructed the entire layer of the land. So when you hear about a particular practice, about a particular thing, you realize that it's helping you become open, it's helping you become empty, because nothing else is really needed. So it is spirituality only when it helps you become empty of your false self. And anything else which is constructive to you of false self and not deconstructive is not spirituality at all. Authentic spirituality is very rare and extremely unpopular. It doesn't give you anything.
Okay, so in this framework, where do you get stuck? So let's expand on that. So you realize that you need to be open and empty. Now what happens is that you end up believing the thought. So now you have the tools for it. So to remain in unconditional love—and true unconditional love is only for God, otherwise the condition of somebodyness is there. So although we may say unconditional love for our children, our parents, our beloved, whatever you may want to say, but actually unconditional love automatically is for God. We can't remain empty then, meaning anchored in this love. That's how spirituality comes about. So remain anchored in the love. Then somebody will say, 'But I can't imagine the love.' So they say, 'Okay, you chant a mantra to the Divine, Ram, Krishna, or Jesus, or God, or whatever.' Then that reminds you of the love that you feel for God.
Then somebody will say, 'But it doesn't work. I just—if I just say Ram, it just goes away. The mind is too open.' They say, 'Okay, you do something longer. Do the Maha Mantra, or do the Jesus prayer, do Gayatri Mantra, and do something which allows you not to get so distracted by the thought.' They say, 'Oh no, no, but I can't remember even to do the mantra. My mind is too active.' Then I say, 'Okay, no, do some pranayama, do some yoga.' You see what it's all coming to? But what happens mostly in the world is that these practices are meant to deconstruct us. This is for us to die to ourselves. But we start building identity around the practice itself. 'Oh, I chanted the mantra for four hours.' With it, I am irritated non-stop.
To get so distracted by the thought, they say, 'Oh no, no, but I can't remember even to do the mantra. My mind is too active.' Then I say, 'Okay, no, do some pranayama, do some yoga.' You see what it's all coming to? But what happens mostly in the world is that these practices are meant to deconstruct us. This is for us to die to ourselves. But we start building identity around the practice itself. 'Oh, I chanted the mantra for four hours.' With it, I am irritated non-stop. And we've all been part of groups or seen groups where that is what the spiritual identity consists of. So that which is meant to deconstruct so that there is no 'me' left, which is empty—that itself becomes a part of the identity. 'Oh, I had this experience and that happened and then this happened.' So it goes from bringing spirituality, which is about God, to being really about self-help, which has nothing to do with the Self, the smallest self. And in the world, there is peace for that, it's fine. But let's not call it spirituality. So spirituality is that which clears the room for God to arrive. So the lane is too narrow. Because the lane is too narrow, there is not enough room for God and me. So empty the cup, whatever metaphor you want to use, it's fine.
So, 'What do you know when you know nothing?' was the answer. Who says this? The truth. Okay, but it is not an achievement in the way of like a traditional knowing. Okay, then we had to empty it. 'Oh, but I got it because I had got it.' It's not that kind of knowledge. You see what I'm saying? In the empirical type of knowledge, if you learned something, then you feel like you can always refer back to it, so 'I have it.' So you can be a claimant to that knowledge. Self-knowledge, you cannot arrive as the claimant because the instant you arrive as the claimant, self-knowledge is lost in the hypnosis of the false self. It doesn't matter, therefore, what happened yesterday. It doesn't even matter what happened one minute ago. Because the instant the claimant is taken to be real, the lane has become full of the 'me' and there is no space for God anymore. So clear the room, clear the path, become headless.
This is... sometimes there is a longing, a longing. Oh God, God. It still comes via the way of thought. Although the longing for God comes through the way of thought, yes, because it may come as an imagined figure feeling.
So acceptable. If it is a true longing and not a distraction, then that is the radar or a homing signal. Okay, it is a homing signal that you can follow to its source, which is your presence itself. This is what is the key. The key is whether it is constructive to your notions about you or it is deconstructive to your notions about you. Yes. So if it is constructive to the notion of 'me,' then it will be, 'Yeah, I had this and I have that and then this happens and the lights come on and then my chakras start shining and then I see Krishna like this and I see Ram like that.' But is that adding to your notion of 'I'? Or is it deconstructive to the notion of 'I,' which is that 'I don't know who I am, I don't know where I am, everything seems infused with God's light, the holy presence, with the love which is unexplainable'?
So this is the barometer you can use for true longing versus a distraction. A distraction offers you something that you can constructively gain for yourself, you see. A true longing is a call to surrender, to become nobody. And if you follow that true longing, then it leads you to the same place. But the mind will not ever long for this. The mind will not long for this. The mind can play the game of pretend spirituality, but the mind always wants something for 'me.' It is not designed to fathom God. It is not designed to fathom God at all. All it knows about is 'me.' Mm-hmm. So true longing does not come in the form of thought.
Many times what can happen is that you may be intuitively sensing the longing or calling from the heart, but your mind tries to distract you by saying, 'Haha, let's do this, that will take care of this, and let's do that, that will take care of this.' Okay? So it tries to be your friend in this search for God, but it really serves to distract you. But as long as the barometer is clear to you: Is this about 'me' at all? What is it truly about? Nobody. Only about God. Still confusing with it. As you learn to just stay in your heart more and more, the mind will not be able to distract that easily. The true longing is this intuitive, yes.
Let's go back ten, twelve years. So this young boy, maybe thirties, whatever, and you had somebody like a Gopala coming to this boy saying, 'I want to come and sit with you.' And he has been very accomplished with all various types of spirituality. He probably knows much more Vedanta than I do. Why would somebody who has done so much spirituality and been in so many higher positions in spiritual missions and all of that come and sit with this silly boy on a dining table with a laptop just speaking of God? Because something in the heart intuitively gets the perfume of God. It's not rational. It's not... you can't compute your way to it. You can't build strategies and tactics.
Those are the words of Master Bankei, actually, if I can paraphrase a bit. You can also see all things are perfectly unresolved in the Unborn. Perfectly unresolved. Thank you.
Versus what... how should I be? Let's start the other way today. How should I be? How should we live? Ethics. How should you be? In the heart, or open and empty? Yeah. Then what is existence? And is there something called true knowledge? This is a study of whether there is something called true knowledge and how it can be acquired. It's called epistemology. And the study of what actually is, if anything at all, and why is there something instead of nothing—these kind of questions, that is called metaphysics or ontology. So what is reality, what is true knowledge, and how am I supposed to be? These are the main questions with which humanity has troubled itself for thousands of years.
And the answer is the most absurd: to be empty of conceptual knowledge. To be empty, therefore, of individual will and self-concernment. All this is organically, naturally known within our true Self. Then we go up that pretend ladder a little more. So we said the door to your being, to your presence, the presence of your being, is unconditional love. So if you say, 'I don't feel this unconditional love,' my advice is to let go of all pride, all arrogance. You see, in pride is usually a blind spot. So is this like a blind spot? Everybody feels like they're very humble, but once you start looking for it, you start to see. Almost every week I get a few reports saying, 'Father, I didn't notice how proud I was. I wanted my way so much. I want to be right all the time.' I think I know better than most of you are coming to these recognitions.
But I can't find my presence. So I would say to you: drown completely, wholeheartedly in this love. Love God with all your might, with every instrument that you feel is available to you. Then to be open and empty will become second nature. And as you open and empty, the boundless, unlimited nature of your being will be apparent to you. Beyond human understanding, beyond any conceptualization, beyond time and space, and beyond birth and death. That being which is the source and light of all of this play that we call our life. This being, the 'I' which is independent of 'am' and 'not am,' being and not being, existence and non-existence—there are no opposites of any sort that ever can apply. That absolute reality you recognize as yourself.
More than anything else, and maybe this answer changes, really is to infect you with this love for God. Because once you have this God infection, the rest does not seem difficult or like work or a struggle. So take you away from the egoic infection of 'me' to an unconditional love for God. For anyone who doesn't have any or doesn't have much self-concern, we are constantly worried about 'me, me.' You can sing the data. We let go of self-concern, not even a hundred percent, mostly you're not so bothered about 'me.' Everything I've said is listened to. So before you can chant the Maha Mantra for God, we have to stop chanting the Maha Mantra of the ego. What is the Maha Mantra of the ego? 'What's in it for me?' Exactly.
Many years ago, actually, one of the founders of a very large company in India, he said to me, 'To be successful, all you have to always remember is: how are you solving "what's in it for me" for people?' And the irony of life is that for so many years I've just been saying there's nothing in it for you. But that is the nature of the human condition. That is also the nature of the 'me'-centered spirituality. The lay of the land is clear. Clear before I mess it all up again.
In America, there was a TV show I was seeing the ads on TV. So there's a TV show about Lego. You have a TV show about Lego. So what they do is that they build these huge Lego creations and then they just take a hammer and blast through all of it. Start again. So it's very Brahma, Vishnu, Mahesh. So this lay of the land is important in the sense of to get a sense of what all of this is about is important. But if you start to worry too much about the framework, things like that, it really can also get in the way of just being empty, of just being surrendered. So if I feel like that is happening, then that's it. It's all rubbish. It's all rubbish anyway. I'll remind you that it's just like a conceptual framework pointing to that which is beyond the realm of concepts.
It feels very much now, 'What should I do?' Okay, but what's still very much that 'me'?
It's not you. It's just your mind. Just your mind. Just a thought. Yes, yes, yes. And the thing is, there's nothing inherently wrong with any of that. And that's why I remember what I told you in terms of: are you constructing or are you deconstructing? Are you trying to get better or you're trying to become nobody? Are you trying to become better at being nobody? Yes. So what does that mean? This to be empty. Yes. Click. Let's record this click sound. So it can seem like there are times in life where all those things help us to be empty. That's completely fine. But the trickster will deceive you and try to make you better at this game rather than getting rid of you. So you can't inhale the drug and say, 'I want to be sane.' And the problem is belief in the content of your next thought. That's all. The mind will say it is this, it is just a thought. And isn't something we just spent saying is just a thought, just a thought?
And some children need to get upset with you. 'What is it? Why do you say it's just a thought? Isn't the mind also consciousness?' He said, 'But I'm just saying a thought is a thought, like a road is the road.' Why does that seem to upset us? Because we've given it more reality than just a thought. It's not just a thought. It doesn't seem like just a thought because it's our identity, it's our belief systems. And there's nothing probably nothing actually that we hate in humanity more than an attack on our belief systems. And there's nothing great about that. It's just because we feel like, 'I've done so much work to try and get through just the right set of beliefs, you have to come and demolish it all.' That's why we don't like it. It's not some great project or something. Because like we constructed all this, are you saying it's all zero? Yes. Still want to make it work. In the stock markets, it is called good money chasing bad money. You still want to make it work. So you feel like, 'Oh, it'll come, it'll come back.' As soon as you feel like, 'I can still make my identity work by polishing it, by making it spiritual...'
Just the right set of beliefs, you have to come and demolish it all. That's why we don't like it. It's not some great project or something because we constructed all this. Are you saying it's all zero? Yes. You still want to make it work. In the stock markets, it is called good money chasing bad money. You still want to make it work. So if you feel like, 'Oh, it'll come, it'll come back,' as soon as you feel like, 'I can still make my identity work by polishing it, by making it spiritual, by making it ethical, by making it nice and sweet and all of that,' but when we start to see that nothing works except to be just rid of it, then it can seem like the most difficult project. At some point, the most difficult project, you feel that, 'What is the meaning? What is the value?' All these big questions start coming. 'What does my life mean?'
But we see that all of our sense-making actually has just been nonsensical. Leave ourselves at peace. All the sense that we have made has just become a layer on top of the inherent intelligence which is already there. Make sense, then get the job. Everything I've said today can be covered in two phrases. What are the two phrases? Heart full and head empty. Not the other way around, head full and heart empty. See you.
I think organically like that, or like you're thinking about it and saying, 'Yeah.' And it's fine. You just have to let go at the level of thought. Then tomorrow, if a tiger comes in front of you and still some fear rises, fear rises. Or it comes in front of you and no fear arises, no fear arises. Life can still continue with its tastes and flavors and all of those things. It is not to come to some sort of a robotic and bland existence. But we are not to put ourselves in a location, give ourselves a reference, a locus, a narrative, thank you, all of that.
But the days of life may seem to get amplified and you feel that after you're free, then you won't have feelings anymore, you won't taste food anymore, you won't need to sleep. Some of these things will happen to you? It's not true. All this can still play out. No, it's only that there is nobody to lay claim to any of that. There is nobody who's writing the autobiography. Therefore, there is no separate entity, no presumed separate entity anymore. What is humility? Humility is simply that you cannot be your favorite anymore.
There is a Hindi movie called Jab We Met. There's a character Kareena Kapoor is playing. So she has a line saying, 'Main apni favorite hoon.' She's saying that, 'I am my favorite person in the world.' And then what happens? She gets slapped around in life to a point where she'll let go of all of that and then, of course, the movie is wrong, then her life starts to mend itself again. So in a way, it's a good metaphor. Whatever we take ourselves to be is not that important that we spend all day thinking about it.
I told him that if you cannot be empty of the narrative, at least change the central character in the narrative. Some may find it very difficult to be open and empty. For those who just can't be empty of a narrative, let that narrative become about God, Guru, Self (being capitalized). When you change the narrative, but is it easy for you to be open and empty?
Yes, except for the work aspect, which is an issue. So there, I mean, so I do the work for God. Is that the way you change them also?
God does the work for one. What is that? The singer, the composer saying that because of Your grace everything is happening in my life and You do it, but I am just getting the name for it or the credit for it, and many times the blame for it. Yeah, the central character of the work aspect in your life. Like often I used to say, we don't know how to move a finger also, but we take credit for so much.
Oh, so good. If I had a singing voice, I would just become a kirtan-wala. I'm very happy. Something that loud, it becomes sweet. Maybe you've not heard me. All right. Yeah, I see she tries to keep up now with the lyrics, super fast version. Many of these singing things also in Maharashtra, the Tukaram Ji...
Like sometimes, it's just like you're sitting on the side of the road and people are just going about their work and you're trying to get their attention for two minutes to just hear something which will probably change their entire life, but they don't realize. So what happens? What do we think about most of the day? Things to do with me, things to do with what will help me, what will... if you're spiritual, then what will give me spiritual progress? Better experiences, pleasure-seeking, gain, avoidance. All these narratives are about me, me, me. But we just talked about this Bhakti movement, sages, and what happened? They stopped thinking about 'me' and it became about God or Krishna and everything was about that. So change the central character in the narrative is as good as being open and empty because there is no ego there. You can't build an ego for someone else. So one of the best parts about having a Guru is that you can make your life about them. Not for... if you make your life about them, it's not that they get something out of it or they want that to happen, but you get rid of your ego in that.
Don't tell your Guru how big your problems are; tell your problems how big your Guru is. So simple, simple things like this. They sound very naive almost at some level. It just allows you to make your life about the greater rather than just this little 'me' that doesn't even exist. We can't even tell it. Yes, yes. Don't tell your Guru about how big your problems are; tell your problems how big your Guru is. Very sweet. I found it very nice. She will also stop asking questions like it's about that.
Listening to that voice, yes. So like when I ask myself, when I take a question to the heart, I can hear that question being said. I can hear that voice. Okay, the answer also is the voice coming from there. So yeah, and this voice is not a thought word. It's not the thought, you mean?
It's not true. The voice is not in the mind.
So the voice I can also control when I ask a question. What if I'm only like giving myself the answer I want? That's not really my experience, although ultimately it is your voice only.
But my experience is not that. It doesn't seem like an arising. What does it mean, this voice is there? What is it? Resonance is there, sort of. But it is a voice, yes. But when you say, 'I can control,' what do you mean? I mean, let's get that voice to say something now. 'Do I exist?'
That voice said it. I said it. Okay.
And now wait for the answer. Sometimes I felt it sort of there as a voice right now, and I'm not so sure. I kept asking again. Allow it to just come out of your emptiness.